New Delhi: The astonishing pictures and videos of astronauts having a stroll in space never seem to abate our zest. Spacewalking, which happens to be a highly risky and tricky task, is usually performed while the astronauts are safely tethered to their spacecraft. However, a picture of an astronaut floating untethered above the earth is going viral on social media. A Twitter user posted the image with caption, "Insane picture of astronaut Bruce McCandless II, the first person to conduct an untethered free flight in space". Insane picture of astronaut Bruce McCandless II, the first person to conduct an untethered free flight in space. pic.twitter.com/6HTKkrE0DF — John Pompliano (@JohnPompliano) January 12, 2022 While some are thrilled to see an astronaut doing so, others are skeptical about the authenticity of the pic. Welcome to the wonderful world of image compression and jpg artifacts — Julius Horsthuis (@JuliusHorsthuis) January 13, 2022 It’s just a clip art on a background… smh pic.twitter.com/y0mgFaOVLk — Łucas Graham (@Lucasgraham25) January 12, 2022 So funny how many ppl believe this nonsense — AMA Archer (@icrack3dth3code) January 12, 2022 ??? He did this in 1984. Literally just google his name. This photo is photoshopped tho, but only to make the mountains appear like they do. He really did this untethered. He died in 2017! Stop spreading fake pics tho, that’s messed up. — ?Crypto Cyber Police (@datcyberguy) January 12, 2022 The image was originally shared in November last year, as a Facebook Post. The post read, “This is a real image of an astronaut that ventured 320 feet from the orbiter, he was 170 miles above Earth. It's arguably one of the best astronaut-related photos ever taken!” A news report by USA today confirmed that the viral picture was taken back in 1984 during astronaut Bruce McCandless's first-ever untethered spacewalk.
